- Techcrunch reviews mixd – Yahoo’s new group texting service I think the group texting facilitiescomplete with web-based archives for text and photoswill rapidly prove to have more useful possibilities than the initial event-organising premise suggests…
- GoogleBlog bids Adieu to Google Answers I find the two different approaches taken by the two companies to the idea of Questions and Answers profoundly interesting. I don’t think anyone’s quite nailed the full dynamics yet, and look forward to seeing how the field progresses….
- The BBC’s Alan Yentob now has an (shudderingly creepy) avatar in Second Life which is flying around for an upcoming BBC TV show I recently spent a bunch of cash in Second Life to try and get an avatar that I actually felt cool, and ended up producing some weird neanderthal looking gay porn-star style figure that sort of embarrasses me to use…
- Checked in at Hicks Design again recently, and reminded myself how classy his work is again Much to explore. Consumately classy.
- The BBC reports on attempts to reconstruct an ancient device thought to measure the movements of the stars I don’t know to what extent the reconstructions referred to in the article are trusted by Classicists or Archaeologists. I should really explore this more. It’s sort of fascinating…
- Loving the eboy Web 2.0 brand-filled pixelposter right about now I want one of these. More particularly I want to make a site that makes it onto things like this. I liked that Odeo and Blogger were surrounded by bikini-wearing hula-hoopers too. Funny.
- I have to say I’m really quite impressed by the new Yahoo TV site It’s clean, open, practical. It has a page for every episode of most programmes and things that users can do around them. Generally pretty solid bit of work.
- Second Life Economic Statistics Fantastically interesting insight-generating whatsits into the amount of people, land and money in Second Life and what they’re all doing…
- Signal vs. Noise on building less and underdoing to win in competitive markets Not sure that I totally buy this, but certainly it’s interesting that Nintendo didn’t take the high expensive compete on raw power route to victory, but instead looked towards making profitable and innovate stuff…
- World of Warcraft’s Top List contain information on everything from most popular auctioned items to creature most likely to kill you Not as interesting as the stats for Second Life, unless you’re totally enmeshed in the ecology of WoW which I’m delighted to report, I feel like I’ve finally escaped from…
Category: Links
- Belly’s gonna getcha! Classicand highly disturbingadvert for some running shoes in the UK. Seeing this advert will make several of my posts from the last few years suddenly make sense…
- Best game ever – an asteroid takes revenge on the tiny vector ships that have been oppressing it I’m a bit of a fan of this. Plucky underdog rises up to fight the oppressor. Very cool.
- Apparently thinking of three good things that happened to you or you did before going to bed improves general happiness This is an AP story, heavily syndicated all over the internets. I wonder about things like the AP. It drives me mad that this link probably won’t work in a few weeks. At the moment it’s on hundreds of sites. In a year? I don’t know that it’ll be on any. Doesn’t seem like a particularly brilliant model…
- It looks like we might actually hit a point relatively soon where you can get two $US for the £ Everything in America is free.
- Duncan Wilson and Sirrka Hammer’s awesome wall of beautiful pixel post-its Really like this – the wall is painted red and then four layers of grey post-its, each a slightly lighter shade the one before are placed on top. Through use patterns and shapes emerge…
- Richard Dawkins has written another essay about Atheism which I suppose is worth a read It’s not the best essay, by any means, but it’s vaguely interesting and of course I’m there with the sentiment. I wonder what draws a man to finally declare war on religion. I feel close to that point, but not there yet…
- Ethan KaplanSenior Director of Technology at Warner Bros Recordsis decidedly unimpressed by the Zune Discovered via the Digial Music Weblog, one of my new favourite places for keeping up with media shifts…
- Jack Schulze talks about robot arms, both those that translate movements larger or smaller and those that operate alone I don’t know if I buy the idea of ubiquitous robotic arms, although no doubt improving technology, better sensors and semi-flexible materials might make them more practical. But it’s a lovely lyrical post. Fascinating…
- New Popular Edition Maps is using 1940s public domain maps as a foundation to build a free UK Postcode database All you have to do is go to the site, find the place you grew up in or your current home on the site and then leave a marker complete with your postcode and the dataset builds itself. Totally public domain. Very cool.
- A team of experts has drawn up five “grand challenges” in order to evaluate the safety of nanotechnology… This seems mostly concerned with the creation of new particulates rather than with any of the so-far science-fiction grey-goo assemblers that people tend to get so tense about…
- Although nominated for best personality, I’m afraid I was not a winner at the Gay Bloggies It went to the much more entertaining Towleroad instead. I always felt a bit out of place in the listings, not being quite A-Gay enough. Still it was nice to be nominated – gives you faith that it’s not just the flamboyantly gay who get noticed…
- towleroad – the blog for modern gay men It’s political, it’s sexy, it’s funny, it’s got all the social media stuff going on and it just deservedly won some gay bloggies. A relaxing read before my people rise up and force our twisted sexualities and musical theatre on Middle America…
- We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to replace the national anthem with ‘Gold’ by Spandau Ballet The British, as ever, cutting to the heart of the world’s big issues. Altways believe in your soul. You’ve got the power to know. Britain, you’re indestructable…
- Beautiful scarves covered in awesome retro-pixel art I desperately want some of these, but I can’t tell whether or not I’d look ridiculous wandering around in one. Would anyone take me seriously? Does anyone take me seriously now?!
- How to write in polytonic (ancient) Greek in OSX This is sort of a niche thing to care about, but care about it I do. I keep wondering if I should put up any of my old abandoned doctoral work onto the web. Seems weird to have spent that much time on something and not be able to open up some of the results…
- Techcrunch (in July) covered the online sites that are hoping to replace paper TV guides Fascinating overview full of useful information that gesture towards the future of television
- The Cintiqas described on Kevin Kelly’s siteis basically a combination tablet and monitor that allows you to do illustration work in a way that resembles working on paper There’s a substantial chunk of writing on the page from Scott McCloud talking about how he uses it too. It looks pretty extraordinary, actually. Wouldn’t mind one of those, although god knows what I’d use it for.
- Medium-old BBC article about the perfect comedy face contains a great line from Ricky Gervais “All these years I assumed my global success as a comedian was down to my acute observations, expert directorial rendering and consummate skills as a performer. Turns out it’s because I’ve got a fat girly face.”